The Undertow (29 page)

“All right,” Will says. “You’re in.”

Mum and Dad and Janet are supposed to be coming next Thursday, like it’s prize day. Mum has promised to bring ice cream, a block each, one for him and one for Cosimo too. Cosimo’s parents are in Rome. Mum does the things they’d do if they could.

On Thursday they’re going to pin his hip. He doesn’t know what the operation will involve because no-one’s told him. But he imagines the pin itself—a great iron pin, the kind you see on breakwaters and jetties, sticking out of the white skin of his hip. Grinding along for ever on a rusty lump of iron. He’s not having that. He’s seen people with pinned hips, the way they move. As if ice cream would make up for that.

And Cosimo. Blimey. Cosimo.

They are going to actually open Cosimo up. They are going to make—he heard Mr. Smyth telling the crowd of student doctors—an incision in his abdomen. In his
belly
. And when they have sliced him open they are going to slip his bad hand in under the skin there and stitch it up. Then they will strap his arm down, bandage his whole body to stop him from tearing at the wound. The procedure, Mr. Smyth told the crowding student doctors, will help the damaged hand heal.

Will doesn’t know how much of this Cosimo understood. He hopes not much.

From what Will’s gathered from Cosimo’s attempts to explain in his patchy, ragged English, there was waste ground—an old bombsite—back in Rome where Cos is from, and there was a hand grenade. And Cos, who was out playing on the waste ground with his pals, picked up the hand grenade to throw it, and wasn’t quite fast enough. Will reckons he’s lucky that there are no hand grenades left lying around London, because chances are that if he found one he’d pick it up and throw it too.

The way Will sees it, Cosimo’s fingers are never going to grow back, no matter where you stick his hand.

So they are going. They are off and away. Him and Cosimo against the world. Though now it’s him and Cosimo and Mickey and Spastic Pete against the world.

And if he ever sees his dad again, when he’s grown up and strong and is playing for Carshalton Athletic, if he sees his dad in the crowd at a match he’ll jog over to him at half-time and say, See, I can do it. You did it your way, and I can do it too.

And then the whistle’ll go and he’ll run off to the game, and he’ll score a goal, the goalie’ll never even see it coming, his boot’s got so much power behind it. Shoots like he’s firing rockets, that’s what they’ll say of him; and, you’d never even know he used to be a cripple.

And maybe someone will see him in the street and want to shake his hand.

Spastic Pete slides out of bed and onto the chunky arm of Sister Joyce. They stagger across the lino towards the French windows and the sun. Sister Kathleen slides in behind Mickey’s bed; her head turned away from Will, she pushes.

Mickey gives him an uneven smile as he’s wheeled away. He mumbles back towards Will, “I can snare rabbits. My uncle taught me.”

Will doesn’t believe him. And it was stupid, to say that in front of
Sister Kathleen. But she doesn’t hear, or doesn’t catch on anyway—thinks it’s the kind of thing boys just say.

Though if it’s true, it could come in handy; with his bow and arrows, and Mickey teaching them all to snare rabbits, they’ll be well off for dinner. He’s got matches and they can roast rabbits and ducks and whatever there is, build a fire in the woods. They’ll be like outlaws.

They’ll
be
outlaws. Fugitives from the law. Or from the hospital, which is much the same thing if you’re in it.

Sister Joyce wedges herself in behind Will’s bed.

“All right then, my lovely,” she says, and shoves, and he jolts forward, rolling out across the lino towards the sun.

He lies blinking. The air is cool. Sister Kathleen comes to tuck his blankets straight.

These few moments are filled with terror and delight. Terror that she will notice the supplies. Delight at her proximity: breathing her lemony scent and gazing at the downy skin on the back of her neck. The way that through the blankets her chest brushes against his legs, the starched bulge of it shifting against the hard cast on his left leg, where he can kind of feel it, and on the right leg, where he can really feel it.

No more tuck-ins from Sister Kathleen; no more lifting and shifting and holding as they put him into traction; no more bed baths.

He’ll live with it. Because a woman like Sister Kathleen wouldn’t want a man with a pinned hip.

She straightens up and smiles at him again. He wants to say something grown up and manly, a John Wayne kind of thing. But she doesn’t wait around for him to speak. She turns away and draws up a chair for Cosimo, whose pyjamas are buttoned up to the chin and whose dressing gown is pulled tight around the middle. He looks like Tom Kitten. Tom Kitten if he’d found a hand grenade to play with instead of a ball of wool.

“There you go,” Sister Kathleen says.

“Thank you, sister,” Cosimo says, which is one of his good phrases.

She smiles at him, her cheeks bunching up into apples, looking at Cosimo’s messy face, and she gives him a little pat on that ragged cheek of his. Will loves her, he realises. And he will never love anyone else, not the way he loves Sister Kathleen. With her hands and her smell and her curls, and her bosom like a pillow in a cool, starched case.

But. There will be snaring rabbits, shooting ducks, building fires, eating Mickey’s Kit Kats. And no-one pinning his hip.

The veranda stretches the length of the back of the hospital. Back in the First War it used to be for soldiers to get sunshine and fresh air and peace and quiet after everything. The theatre is where they used to try to put them back together again, or at least tidy up the ragged edges. That’s where Mr. Smyth got his idea that doctors can just try stuff out to see what happens, and patients will just say, Oh, thank you, Mr. Smyth, and stump off home, because if you’re half mangled in a war then you’re glad to get whatever help you can, and if what’s wrong with you is completely different and completely new then they’ll have to experiment then, won’t they? But back before the wars, this place used to be posh. You can tell by the space. The marble in the front hall. The grounds. Back then, people had old-fashioned diseases, and men like Mr. Smyth did what they were told to do by the people who paid them. The doctors didn’t get to do any of their experiments, because people won’t pay to be experimented on.

They drug you up before you go. They wheel you in while you can’t do anything to stop it. Then they strap you to a table and do whatever they like to you.

The back lawns are bounded by a lane and then a stone wall. The lane is lined with great spreading trees, a lane for grocery vans and the coal man and the gardener. Their vans pass from time to time, half-hidden by the bank, flicking between the grey trunks of the trees. Beyond that the Hampshire fields rise and fall; woods grow in the nooks and dips between them. He has his eye on one particular spot. A patch of trees growing up the side of the hill, bigger than the rest; he can see the leaves ripple in the breeze. It’s like home in a game of tig: he knows that if he can just get there, he’ll be safe. He’ll cut off this bloody plaster cast. His penknife is good and sharp. He will smash the plaster into dust. He will throw it in a stream. Or, maybe, he’ll leave it somewhere out along the road, drop it by the verge for someone to find. Like a shed snakeskin, a thrown-off disguise. They won’t find him, because he will be transformed. This is not who he is, the boy who lies on the bed weighted down while people do things to him, while Mr. Smyth decides what experiment to try next. Get this plaster off, and given half a chance his leg will grow strong, he knows it.

From back in the ward, pails clank in the empty long room, voices pealing out with “Whistle While You Work.” Will scans the line of
beds, checking the route. There is a low rail along the length of the veranda, to keep beds and wheelchairs from rolling off, but at the far end, to the left, a ramp slopes down to join the gravel path below. That’s their way out. All clear.

“Next song,” Will says to Cosimo. “Soon as they start up on the next song, we’ll be off. Should cover any noise.”

Cosimo nods, grins, making the bald scar on his head wrinkle up.

Pete ambles down along the veranda in his callipers and crutches like a dizzy giraffe, and clanks down onto the chair next to Mickey’s bed. Cosimo lays the backgammon set down on Will’s lap, doesn’t open it. Spastic Pete nods to Will:
Ready when you are
.

The lawns are smooth and green and tempting: an invitation to run like a mad thing, shouting, waving your arms in the air.

But there’s quiet from the ward. Just the swoosh and clank of mopping. Will’s skin prickles. Perhaps they won’t sing again. Perhaps Matron has forbidden it. Perhaps they’ve got to work in silence now. But he has to go anyway, cover or no cover. He has no choice. He’s just steeling himself to give Cosimo the order, and there’s a crackle from inside, they’re tuning in the radio—then it’s the Light Programme, and it’s the Wilfred Pickles show
Have A Go
. He can’t hear what’s said. A cackle of laughter, and then the women laugh too. Good dense sound. Great cover.

He smiles to Cosimo, jerks his head:
We’re off!

Cosimo scrambles to his feet. Will swivels round to catch Mickey’s eye, and Spastic Pete’s. He gives them a look. A Lone Ranger kind of look. Then he drags the broom handle out from underneath the blankets.

And this is it. D-Day. H-Hour. Go go go!

He punts down against the concrete—Cosimo shoves the bedhead, and they’re rolling along the veranda, past the row of stationary beds and bent-wood chairs, where the other boys cheer them on in silence, throwing pillows, waving comics over their heads, scattering clouds of playing cards up into the air.

They career down the ramp—only a two-foot drop, but the sudden swoop of the descent makes Will’s stomach lurch. He can hear the rattle of Mickey’s bed coming along behind, the hard clank of Pete’s boots and callipers on the concrete. It feels good, the punt of the pole against the ground, the beechwood sliding easily through his palms, the unexpected strength of his arms. Will they notice they’ve gone, back
indoors? His bed spins out onto the compacted gravel, and then lurches up onto the grass; they soar out across the lawns. It is smooth as plain sailing. The light and distance before them, the cool air on Will’s face, stirring his hair: it makes him laugh. He leans into the work, paddling like an Indian in his canoe, racing across the green lake of the lawns.

Will hears the crump behind him as the second bed hits the edge of the grass, and then rattles on across the lawn. They’ll make it: he and Cosimo will make it—he knows this. He’s not so sure about the others.

“Going great guns—” he calls back to Cosimo, and Cosimo, being a boy of few words, and out of puff to boot, just smiles red-facedly at him.

They come up to the trees. A glance round and Mickey and Pete are doing okay, a hundred yards or so behind. Ahead, the ground is dotted with small whitish flowers. Then Will hears the first shout. A cry really, more than a shout. Sister Kathleen. In his mind’s eye she is standing there with her sleeves rolled and hair loose and a hand to her heaving bosom, looking out across the lawn after him, realising she will never see him again.

The second shout is a bark from Matron—and then after that a series of blunt, angry orders. They’re after them.

The tree roots make the ground lumpy, and they bounce and jolt and for a moment he thinks they’re completely stuck, but he shoves hard with his broom handle, and they lurch onwards and up and then they are teetering on the brink of the bank down to the lane, and they are no sooner at it than they are over it, crashing down onto the chalky white surface, careering round, Cosimo hammering away behind, and the pain from Will’s leg searing up his back and down all the way to his big toe like a shock of red electric. He blows out a breath.

“Good fun, no?” Cosimo calls over the clattering and the speed and the yells from beyond, and Will, clenched against the pain, nods.

They hammer down the gravel track, the branches whisking overhead, patches of dappled sun, tree trunks slipping past like the legs of giant elephants. A green smell, and the mossy banks twisted with roots, and Cosimo chuckling to himself even as he runs, and Will, despite the pain, feels a thrill of delight. They are on the track now. They are heading for the gate. No-one’s ever got this far before.

They’re going to make it.

Which makes him think again of Pete and Mickey. He leans round to look for them, and, glimpsed between the lantern-show flicker of the
tree trunks, it’s exactly as he imagined it. The bed is stalled, its wheels jammed in the lumpy ground. Mickey is too far away, too flat against the pillows for Will to see him. But he sees Pete staggering on alone across the grass without the support of the bed or his crutches. His arms flail. Sister Joyce steams up behind him, her cap hanging by a pin, her dark hair tumbling loose, and then she flings herself forward and tackles Pete, sending him sprawling to the ground like a dropped bundle of sticks. Will flinches for him. Then Sister Kathleen staggers up to Mickey’s bed, one hand to its frame, the other pressed to a stitch in her side. She looks down at Mickey, says something, shakes her head. She reaches round him, fussing, tucking, checking he hasn’t come to any harm. And then she looks up, straightens up, and looks out after Will.

Will’s heart flips. The trees thicken; the view is gone. He turns to look ahead. The driveway dips away, and he can see the gate.

It stands wide open: beyond, there is a curve of tarmac—the road. His heart lifts like a lark, soars. Almost there. They rattle down the final slope towards the gateway.

He hears men’s voices, but they are far off: they won’t catch him and Cos. Once they’re out of the gate and heading downhill along the road, Cosimo can step up onto the bedframe to coast, getting his breath back, while Will steers their trusty ship with his pole. They will put distance between them and this place. Later, when they’ve made their camp in the woods, they will build a fire and eat egg sandwiches. Kit Kats would have been nice, but he doesn’t mind. He’s glad that it is just him and Cosimo, after all. They can teach themselves to snare rabbits. He’ll shoot a duck.